The two main activities I chose for San Gil, the adventure capital of Colombia, were paragliding and whitewater rafting. When the 5 of us arrived at our hostel, Macondo, the owner immediately showed us a video of many different adventurous options to conquer in San Gil. We were all hooked! Some other adventures included waterfall hiking and mountain biking. In addition, there are many hikes between pueblos near San Gil so the fabulous 5 decided we’d spend a day doing one of those hikes as well (John reluctantly 😉 He had enough hiking from recent adventures. James was onboard but he had to upgrade from hiking in his flip-flops and find a pair of hiking boots large enough to fit him. Ali and Jay are the biggest hikers in the group.
Whitewater rafting – there are 2 options. We obviously chose the more dangerous option with class 4 and class 5 rapids (class 5 is most difficult). I have been whitewater rafting twice in my life. The first time I went was probably 7 years ago and had a similar difficulty level as what we chose in San Gil. I remembered in West Virginia (rafting 7 years ago) they had very specific directions for each rapid (e.g., if you fall in the water swim, left, right, center. Or if you fall in the water, don’t try to swim, just lift your legs up otherwise your legs may get caught in rocks and you will drown.) Serious directions like this and they change for each rapid you go through. Now, I’m nervous to go with a foreign company wondering, what are their safety procedures? Will I understand these life-dependent directions in Spanish or perhaps broken English? I’m nervous, but try not to let it show. But, after my experience whitewater rafting in Colombia, I realized Colombia Rafting Expediciones is a very professional, welcoming, and adventurous company – you can see my first ever review on Trip Advisor for them.
We are getting ready to get in the raft. I’m still nervous and certain I don’t want to end up in front, but I also don’t want to be in back because I love the thrill of the rapids. Ali, being her first time rafting ends up in the front. I think, wow, she’s brave, but actually she was naive and had no idea where to sit in the raft. We hit our first rapids and she and the other person up front are engulfed in waves. Holy shit, this tour is no joke. We are getting into some serious rapids here. After a few rapids, Ali looks at me and asks if I want to go up front and I practically leap out of my seat. Hands down, the best spot in the raft is up front. You feel like you are in the rapid, fighting to get out with your paddle. You’re also frequently blinded by being splashed by the rapids, so in a way, paddling blindly. Incredible. The final rapid we hit, the biggest, Jay and James were up front. I swear Jay kept looking back at me with this “holy crap” look on his face, grinning from ear to ear. We make it through the rapid, celebrate with our paddles up in the air “CELEBRACION!” and realize one of the other rafts flipped! Everyone was safe but we had to help gather some of their paddles. Then we returned to land, they provided us a delicious lunch, and we bused back to our hostel. Below are a few pictures from rafting. The company had a GoPro to take pictures and videos of us so there are MANY. I of course, can’t figure out how to add video on here, so I’ll add a couple to Instagram and Facebook instead.
Next, it’s time to go paragliding. Ever since my brother, Danny, has described his stories of hang gliding and paragliding, I knew I had to try it. I’d been sky diving, but something about running off a cliff seemed more exciting. Plus, when you paraglide you are in the air for a much longer period of time. I think I was paragliding for 20-30 minutes. Again there were two options to paraglide and we chose to paraglide over Chichamocha Canyon, which is breathtaking.
Jay had already been paragliding before and he and Ali decided to go to a waterfall that day instead so paragliding was left to John, James, and I. James and I each take a dramamine to help with the motion sickness we are expecting. We heard that at least 1/10 people vomit from paragliding, we both get motion sickness on the bus, so we wanted to be prepared. John risks it. We arrive at the take off and landing point over the canyon. The team selects me to go first. Great. They strap me to a guy I just meet, Freddy, and say very few directions in Spanish. I start repeating the directions back in Spanish to make sure I understood what they said, “Ok, run, lift my legs, sit?”. They quickly say in so many words “sí” but as I’m wanting to ask more questions they tell me to start running “corre, corre”. I’m thinking, wait, there has to be more safety intructions for this. I’m running off a cliff! But I have no choice, as I can’t protest quickly or easily in Spanish and Freddy is already running, pushing me forward, and just like that, we’re in the air. And I feel secure, sit back, and take in amazing views of the Canyon.
I asked Freddy not to do any turns or flips because I know my stomach is not made for that. The boys, John and James, welcome the turns and flips and both make it back without getting sick. But another soul in our group ended up being one of the statistics for vomiting. Again, there are many, many pictures and videos since I had a Go-Pro. I’ll try to put some video on Facebook and Instagram as well.
We made it!
Mi Mochila Y Yo 
This is right up your alley! Tanta aventura!
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Sí amiga! Siempre aventura para mí!
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Omg this sounds crazy! Glad you’re having fun! (And glad you’re safe after your crazy adventures!)
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Those rapids look intense! I am the 1/10 for paragliding. Haha. Pictures look awesome. So cool you had the GoPro.
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You are the reason I did not do the flips and turns haha. And it was awesome having the GoPro but I didn’t know what to do with it the whole time in the air!
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I’ve tried to post 3 times and it’s not showing up! Sorry if I have 4 comments on this post now. Ha.
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Haha I think it’s because I have to “approve” posts before they show up. I’ve been slow with my blog lately. I’ll try to delete the others for you 🙂
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Those rapids look intense! So cool you had the GoPro. I’m unfortunately 1/10 for paragliding… Haha.
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awesome adventures!
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